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Friday, October 12, 2007

Boring may be good

A comment by Trixie about how she was getting tired of salads struck me as insightful. Or at least it gave me this insight: Losing weight means that food has to be less exciting than it was to me. No, wait, hear me out. There are thousands of cookbooks out there that teach us how to cook tasty low-cal meals. They use spices, garnishes, unusual combinations, substitutes, etc., but the point, the perhaps unconscious message of all those books is that eating is important, that it's something we need to spend time on, that taste should rule our lives. Yet ... there's an old saying about how we live to eat instead of eating to live.

I'm not saying that our meals have to be sand and ashes with a bit of grass. I am saying that too much emphasis on the desirability of food is a bad thing. There's nothing wrong with a boring salad while having a good lunch conversation with friends or while reading a good book or watching an interesting TV show.

Food has got to stop being our lover and has to become our casual friend. As you can tell, I've been carrying on an improper relationship with chocolate cherry cheesecake for years. I think it's time we both moved on.

5 comments:

I think you are right. I do much, much, MUCH better when I think of food as a prescription instead of a pleasure. What I mean by that is, if I map out what I am going to eat and make sure I have it available, I can sail through several weeks on auto-pilot, eating just what I should. But leave me to making choices on the run? No way! That's when I let the seduction of food start winning -- the addiction is at work and I lose my food sobriety, so to speak. I need to have a plan and work the plan. Sure, I can enjoy what I choose, but I'm not lead by the enjoyment. Rather I'm lead by my DECISIONS.

I think it depends on your personality. If I let my food get boring, I tend more to grab stuff I shouldn't eat, just to have something different. But, if I make an effort to have variety, trying new recipes on a regular basis, I'm more likely to stick to the food I planned. So, I think this is one of those things where you have to figure out what works best for you and do that. :)

Move on to healthier choices, yes, I would agree to that. But maybe you can fall in love with ripe cherries without the cheesecake and just learn to appreciate them on their own.

I think it's possible to love things that are good for us. Not that I have a lot of experience in loving things that are good for me, but I'm sure in time my passing nods to carrots and spinach will grow into a deeper friendship and may even develop into the love of my life.

Of course, I need spice and variety in my life. If I just had salad every day it would not just be boring, but I would come to loathe it. Carrots, spinach, lettuce and endives will just have to understand when I stray over to a fruit salad, or a high fiber shake, or maybe a whole wheat turkey sandwich, or whole grain high fiber crackers with low fat cheese. I could never be faithful to just salad.

I'm always going to have a relationship with food, but I just need to make healthier choices is what I'm trying to say. I think.